


Where They Went Wrong

by CharacteristicallyMinor



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Post Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacteristicallyMinor/pseuds/CharacteristicallyMinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor considers his relationship with River after The Angels Take Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where They Went Wrong

River represents danger for the Doctor. She's dangerous and mysterious and an equal. He doesn't know whether he's scared of that or loves it. Both, really. She gives him a sense of family that he hasn't felt in far too long. 

 

She seems like she can do anything, and this makes him want to top her. It pushes him to work harder to impress her. 

 

They remind each other to have compassion and keep each other from going insane from loneliness and the grief that comes from long life. They fit together perfectly and the Doctor can't imagine what would have happened to him without her. Just like how Rose saved his ninth regeneration after the Time War, River has saved this one in more ways than he can count.

 

The Doctor thought that they had a good relationship. It had its flaws (namely, the timey-wimey issues), but they loved each other. 

 

After the Ponds started to travel less and less with the Doctor, he mostly travelled alone. He'd go for long periods of time without contact with them, only coming back when he was desperate. He knew that they would only go on a few more trips with him before leaving him for good, and he didn't want to waste any of his time with them. 

 

During the time when he mostly travelled alone, he didn't see much of River. He knew that she was busy with his younger self. He was kind of avoiding her, actually. He was afraid that he would hear her talk about going to the Library or that she would ask to go to the Singing Towers. He was afraid that he'd lose her, so close to when he was losing her parents. 

 

So he travelled alone, and he became harder, less merciful. And then he embarked on what he knew to be the final journey with the Ponds. Rory went missing and River showed up. 

 

That whole night was a study in false hope. He thought that River, brilliant, marvelous River, had managed to change the timelines, but she was really just hiding her injury. He thought that Rory might have a small chance of escape, but the angels managed to follow. He thought that the Ponds' jump had changed the future, but the angels took Rory, and Amy followed.

 

In the end, he was left with two best friends who he could never see again and a soon-to-be-dead wife who apparently didn't trust him. Or rather, it wasn't that she didn't trust him in most ways. It was just his love that she didn't trust to stay. She thought that if she let him see any age, any vulnerability at all, then he wouldn't love her anymore.

 

She couldn't have been more wrong. She of all people should know that appearances didn't matter to him. He'd had ten different bodies previously, each very different in age and every other physical characteristic. She hadn't loved him any less when he had been in his tenth regeneration; why should he care that her body looked older than his? 

 

And what had given her the idea that he couldn't be allowed to see that she was in pain? Did he really give her the impression that he would only love her if she hid everything real about herself.

 

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that she had been spending her time recently with his younger self. The one who was a bit scared of her, and who had wanted to abandon her at Byzantium. The one whose love she was trying to win, and who didn't know her well enough for her to be open and honest with him.

 

The fact that his older self was avoiding her probably didn't help matters. 

 

Well, that would change. River needed him, and he needed her. He needed her so much. No matter how close she was to the Library, he couldn't let her go. 

 

It's called marriage.


End file.
